The Arnold of Text Editors
Written: Dec 03 '99 (Updated Dec 08 '99)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: small, easy, great features, mini word processor for text files, free except cost of postcard
Cons: NONE
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| JMB623's Full Review: Editpad |
Windows Notepad, the default text editor, does an OK job of letting you manipulate text files. It opens one file at a time, and has a default font, and the ability to print. BORING! I was just looking around for something, and stumbled on www.jgsoft.com, home of Editpad. I read about it, found it was free, except the developer wants everyone to send him a postcard. The description sounded so intriguing, I just had to download Editpad and try it out. It was so cool I e-mailed copies to Elegiac and Counsel.
The download is a 292 kb zip file. After extracting the files with ZipMagic 2000 (ZM2K), the readme says installation can be done in two different ways. One is to copy "editpad.exe" to a directory, C:\Program Files\editpad. The other way is how I did it, and that is to copy Windows "Notepad.exe" to a zip disk, delete it from C:\Windows, then copy or move "Editpad.exe" to C:\Windows, and finally rename it "Notepad.exe" (both alternatives are suggested by the developer). That's the complete installation procedure.
When you double click the ".exe" file, you first get a license that you either agree to, or Editpad is terminated. Then you click on OPTIONS/Configure. The dialog box has check boxes that allow you to choose to make it the default program for text files, display it's icon next to text files, put a shortcut in your sendto menu, put an icon on the desktop, put an icon on the start menu, and put an icon on the programs menu. You can change this configuration any time using the same procedure. Installing newer versions entails deleting the old "Editpad.exe" or "Notepad.exe" (if you renamed it), and copying the newer one to wherever you had the old one. To uninstall, you're not going to believe this, you click OPTIONS/Configure and click the uninstall button. After that, you just delete the "Editpad.exe".
Editpad's GUI is clean and easy to understand. It has a menu bar with File; Edit; Print; Block; Convert (ANSI <=> OEM [DOS ASCII] conversion); Options; View; Help. When you close the GUI, it minimizes to an icon in the system tray until you decide to right click and close it. You can already see that it does more than your old Notepad. It has big buttons on the toolbar for new files; close; open; save current text; save all text; undo; cut; copy; paste; find a word in the text; go to a specific line; insert date/time; change fonts; auto break long lines. It's like a mini-word processor for text files.
But what it does that will really blow you away is open in one screen umpteen text files separated by tabs. The developer states you can open as many files as you want. I opened 15 files just to see it work, and it put 15 tabs on the screen which I could click on to see/work on each separate file. The Block functions allow you to save a part of your work to a disk, or insert a file in the text you're working on. The reopen menu is capable of showing the last 16 files you opened. One last big one, it has MAPI support so you can summon your e-mail client and mail text files from it.
The developer is located in Belgium, which explains why he only asks for a postcard from you if you use it. He accepts money, but doesn't ask for anything except a travel postcard. Obviously, not an American. This little text editor is so terrific, Bill Gates must be asleep at the switch, and running on one cylinder, for not buying and enslaving the developer. If I could, I'd rate this ten stars. When you see it, and you will, the first thing you're going to say is, "Why isn't this the default text editor that comes with Windows?" Are you listening Bill?
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
JMB623
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Member: Joel
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